Why do people hate Godaddy and Hostgator?

There is nothing wrong with GoDaddy or HostGator. However, with that said...there has been MANY MANY reports of GoDaddy shutting down peoples domains from the simplest complaint of content, copyright and even fraudulent complaints by vindictive customers or opposing competition. A Domain Registrar shouldn't be involved with the compliance of your web site, period. I had an experience with GoDaddy 4 years ago where they became the mediator of a report made a former member of a web site of mine. GoDaddy actually had the nerve to go through my web site and make a list of changes that I needed to make at someone elses request. I had to comply to avoid my domain being terminated. Since then...I NEVER register any important domains with them.

As for HostGator... I've never had any major problems with my $10/mo account. However, they are a large commercialized host which leaves them vulnerable for attacks. I have noticed random files appearing in my directories and one time someone added spam code to the bottom of each file on my site. Their support wouldn't or couldn't acknowledge it being a whole in their security... The result was disabling my account. They quickly reinstated once I made the changes.

 

You are correct about GoDaddy's past (and possibly current) behavior of seizing domain names because of complaints of spamming or whatever. That was what encouraged me to transfer my domains out of GoDaddy and into NameCheap 8 years ago. It is not a registrar's role to police the internet, but the former GoDaddy founder/CEO thought so. By the time I transferred my domains out, I had already moved my hosting from GD because of insanely slow load times due to massive server overloading.

 

My other issue with GoDaddy is the cost. Sure the .com can be bought for $8 or less per year but if you want a private whois you end up spending a lot more. Other Registrars charge $14.99 with the option of privacy at no additional expense.

 

Myself and countless have that same issues. A very large amount of GoDaddy customers used to use it because they always had lots of discount codes for domain registrations. Now that they have made changes and people can use countless amounts of registration codes, GoDaddy is losing a lot of their customers.

Yeah, GoDaddy lost money to the registry on codes like their $.99, $1.99 and so on discount codes, but they always seemed to find a way to made up for it with higher renewal costs, domain privacy, extra services and so on. Sure, a new customer can get a domain for $.99, but if you add privacy that jumps up to the $9 range.

Pay $9 for the first year of a domain registration with a $.99 discount code and $7.99 for a private registration, then the following year when renewal time come you're looking at $12 - $15 for the domain renewal plus another $8 - $10 for the privacy again. Paying $25 for a .com domain with private registration at renewal time (or any time) is crazy, especially when you can get it for under $10 for both at some registrars!

 

I dont hate godaddy. I hate hostgator. A lot of hidden charges that you will never find until you stuck with them. so Be careful!!

 

As was mentioned previously if you need a higher level of service you need to pay for it by moving to a dedicated server.

I find the HostGator live chat support to be very helpful and knowledgeable which is worth a lot to me as most companies with a live chat feature put kids on it after 2 days training.

 

What do you mean?

1. You are never stuck with a web host.

2. They can't take money from you without it showing as a transaction on your credit card statement.

I have never had HostGator charge me for something I did not order. What were you charged for?

 

Used to be with Hostgator but found another Hosting service who are brilliant (D9 Hosting). If anyone can mess up a cPanel file system its me, thank god for my hosting service. As for Godaddy, still buy and park domains with them, never had any problems and they quite often have some good deals on.

Cheers
Jon

 

naa, I wouldn't focus on the naysayers. I personaly love the both of them and both of them actually pay me everymonth!

 

I haven't personally experienced any issues with HG & Godaddy. Support is reasonably fast, you can chat at any time. But definitely, what you pay is what you get. If you want fast servers then may need to choose from one of the dedicated servers. For startups & small businesses, basic plans could work fine.

 

Thanks Netstar for bringing that up. I m going to explain you that what kind of experiences and surprises I got from hostgator.

Note: Here i m just going to talk about hostgator Hatching plan, which is the very basic plan of hostgator.

Well, on there homepage right now they say the hosting cost is $2.78/month. Now as a consumer, I got excited to see all those unlimited feature for $2 buck. But when you go to 2nd page.. Surprise! you have to signup for 3 years to get $2 plan per month. Which in reality is about $100 upfront for 3 years subscription

The real price that you will see on the 2nd page is $4.38/month.

Well $4.38/month is nothing.. BUT here where they give you one more surprise which is when you go to the 3rd page after choosing the $4.38/month plan.. you will see another surprise that this $4.38/month is only for first month and month after that it will be $10.95/mo. which was totally deceiving to the normal consumer about there first statement of $2/month plan on their homepage.

Now, I understand this is a sale technique to make consumer click to go to next page but in there hatching plan they didn't disclose anything clearly on their page about it and let me tell you what are those think that i find out later after i signed up

1: You can't get dedicated ip in hatching plan. You have to upgrade to business plan or higher plan
2: You can't get SSL to setup on hatching plan. You have to upgrade to business or upward plan
3: Even after you upgrade from hatching plan to business plan you CANT use third party ssl. You have to buy the SSL from them (which they never disclose on their website)

My client insisted me to sign up with hostgator about 2 month ago. He has a small wordpress website with 10 pages only. Above was my experience after i start with host gator hatching plan and then have to upgrade to business plan for SSL use and then I have to get my money back from them because i cant use SSL from third party on there business plan.

Some people may disagree with me but this was my experience with them.

 

So you were incorrect when you said "A lot of hidden charges until you are stuck with them". What you meant to say was "I didn't understand their promotion and since it was only a few dollars I decided to buy it anyway".

 

As for first part, you were wrong about your statement that "I didn't understand their promotion".

I will try again to explain it again that I'm not incorrect about hidden charges. Let me re phrase it a bit to clear the picture for you.

After i already bought their hatching plan, they told me that if i want a SSL I need to upgrade to business plan. Which for me was a hidden charge in a way, that wasn't disclose in a first place that you can't have SSL with hatching plan. I have to upgrade to the new business plan and have to pay the non promotional fee to get upgraded, which end up about 16 USD.

Later when i tried to apply the ssl that i bought from third party company and tried to apply it on my client hostgator account.. I can't able to do that. Then hostgator support told me that I can't use ssl from third party. I have to buy it from them. That was again a surprise and IS a hidden charge for me that I m STUCK with them and i wasn't aware of there plan policy.

As for your 2nd statement that "since it was only a few dollars I decided to buy it anyway". I'm not sure why you said that but you are correct. Like i said before that my client insisted to try them out and yes it was just a few dollars.

Hope that clear it out

 

It states on the web site that Private SSL is only available on the Business Plan. Which means an SSL certificate exclusive to your domain name. It also says a Shared SSL is provided for all accounts which means it's not exclusive to your domain name. It was disclosed.

You thought that you could use a 3rd party SSL certificate and install it in a shared hosting environment? No. You aren't a server admin or have root. Hostgator will provide you with a FREE SSL certificate with the business plan. With any other plan it's not available but I'm sure they will charge you for it if you really want it. This is just common sense. They didn't do you wrong.

It is clear. But I don't think they did you wrong. I think the error is on your part. I am guilty of it as well... Often all the times :-P

 

Like I said, it depends on the provider. A decent VPS should cause you no problems... just like the one's we provide. All our VPS clients are content.

 

There process is complex, it takes time and a person with middle level experience of buying domains and hosting even can't understand where to go. They have lots of lots option. I personally like simple process like bluehost.com and for domains a simple process of domain.com.

 

You can't get better prices with a reasonable support other than goDaddy and HostGator and yes problems are there and we can't get all benefits

Normally problem come when you start over using your allocated quota of space and bandwidth. Isn't it?

 

I also moved my domains to Namecheap but mostly because of better renewal prices

 

I see nothing wrong with using GoDaddy to register domains. I've never used their hosting services though. HostGator, on the other hand, I still have one account with them. I moved most of my sites away from their shared hosting to a managed VPS with another provider and have not had one problem with them since. I simply got tired of all the alerts that my sites with HG were down. I actually recommended their customer support years ago, but no longer.

 

Hi i am using hostgator , no problems at all for the past 10 years (Godaddy not using it as advised NOT to use them)